“I'm tired of
waiting on a ship that won't leave shore
The water's bloody with the ones, who came before”

-- Sleater-Kinney,
“Steep Air”

Go
ahead and get excited about Cindy Sheehan’s overnight popularity. It
really is an incredibly important development for the antiwar movement. But
before we drop what we are doing and follow her lead, we better take a
sobering step backward and recognize Sheehan, alone as a one-woman show,
has very real limitations.

First, we should
start listening to what she is actually saying, which is that this is not
about her or her loss. It’s about the war. It’s about the slaughter taking
place in Iraq right now. She’s also calling for troops to come home right
now. Which is exactly what the antiwar movement should be calling for. But
isn’t. Not yet anyway.

Liberals like Marc
Cooper and Juan Cole
are calling for a phased withdraw ala Senator Russ Feingold’s exit
December 2006 proclamation. Writing for his blog Cole explains his lofty
perspective: “I think ‘US out now’ as a simple mantra neglects to consider
the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing,
there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002.
And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean,
unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and
hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in
1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn't doing any
good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never
actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is
keeping on what could be a volcano.”

Yep. Those are
prolonged occupation excuses from an “antiwar” scholar. Cole’s thesis is a
non sequitur. Funny how the tenured Prof’s rationale mirrors that of the
Bush administration -- “stay the course” he effectively says. Keep the
occupation steaming onward. Forget the mounting death count. Forget that
the US does not have any intention of running Iraq justly. If we “cut and
run” a “volcano” (obviously Cole isn’t a geologist) will erupt for
Christ’s sake! Those damn Arabs are not smart enough to be able and figure
out their future all by their lonesome! We’ve got to show them! That’s the
American way dammit!

Oh, how noble of
Professor Cole. If we are to accept his putrid rhetoric, however, then we
are not acknowledging the voices of dissent in Iraq that have been ringing
unmistakably clear these past months. They want the US out yesterday.
Occupiers like Cole don’t listen, though. They impose whatever they think
is best on those they occupy.

Can you imagine
someone defending slavery in this manner? “No, no, no, don’t end slavery!”
they’d scream. “The slaves will just turn against each other. It’d be
civil war! The savages! We’ll give them their freedom in due time! When we
say so!”

Well, I hate to say
it, but Cole isn’t accepting democracy no matter how much he claims to
believe in its principles. The Iraqis voted and the majority that did want
their occupiers to leave now. They want to govern themselves. Build their
own infrastructure. Run their own government. Is that too much to ask?

Prof. Cole doesn’t
want that. At least not yet. He’ll let us known when. Good thing Cole has
on his side the liberal huckster Marc Cooper, who has chimed in to defend
Cole’s “stay the course” bullshit. As Cooper writes on his own conceited
blog, “Some of the more delusional responses predictably enough come from
the Idiot Right who accuse Cole of being a traitor. And, yes, also from
those who want immediate, unconditional, un-thought-out withdrawal on the
Unrepentant Idiot Left. One of the more prolific buffoons from that corner
-- Louis Proyect the self-described ‘Unrepentant Marxist’ -- can offer no
better response than to compare Cole with Dick Nixon and then further
suggest I undergo a lobotomy for having linked to Cole and to cure what he
diagnoses as my incipient [Christopher] Hitchens Syndrome.”

I am pretty sure I’d
much rather be a buffoon than endorse the death of more innocent civilians
-- which would surely happen under Cole and Cooper’s rosy “eventual
withdraw” (read: prolonged occupation) scenario. Staying the course will
only elicit more violence, more anti-US sentiment. This is a fact. What we
do not know for a fact is how the Iraqis will deal with US exiting. There
is absolutely no way to know for sure. If a civil war breaks out in Iraq
after our exit -- god forbid -- that’s the course Iraqis will choose to
take on their own. But we don’t have any moral authority to impose our
values on them and their decisions. I’m sure Prof. Cole (and maybe even
Cooper) has heard what this imperial behavior is called -- we call it
ethnocentrism.

So let’s get back to
Cindy Sheehan, who is calling for an immediate withdrawal of soldiers in
Iraq. She doesn’t want any permanent bases in the country, which is a far
better position then both Cole and Cooper combined. But Sheehan as a lone
messenger has real limitations. She has been branded by the media as a
mother who is motivated by her own grief. She is not thinking rationally,
they say, she is just trying to make sense of her son’s death. All this,
despite the fact that her message is purely political; Sheehan is
articulate and media savvy, heck she even has a “progressive” publicist.
Cindy lacks something important however -- she has never served in Iraq
like her late son Casey.

The true leaders of
the anti-war movement are going to be Casey’s fellow troops like Kelly
Dougherty, Pablo Paredes and Jason Gunn who have served in Iraq and are
now speaking out against the war. There are hundreds of them. Perhaps
thousands. They can’t be discredited in the same manner as Cindy Sheehan.
They’ve seen the blood and smelled the death first hand. These are the men
and women who will become the leaders of the movement. Not Cooper and
Cole, thank heavens.

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out!: How Liberals
Helped Reelect George W. Bush, published by Common Courage Press. You
can order a copy at a discounted rate at
www.brickburner.org. Joshua can be reached at
Joshua@brickburner.org.